April 6, 2004

Well, the trip to Bangkok was excellent. There were some very good presentations in my areas of teaching, and I had to opportunity to meet some old friends from my days teaching at LAS. I also had a chance to hear from some old friends in Irian Jaya and get some information about how the school is doing there. And, of course, I had to squeeze time in for a lot of shopping - clothes for all of us, some art supplies for the kids, a few computer things for me and a few swimming suits for Su. Even flying was bearable on this trip since it has been such a long time since I've gone anywhere. I decided to take the new flight from Denpasar to Sekongkang so I had to overnight in Kuta. It was the first time that I've been in Kuta for a few years and that was fairly interesting. I had a chance to go to the new Ace Hardware store in Kuta Galleria. That alone made the whole trip worthwhile. The store is just incredible - everything for the new house that I could want and all of it in one place.

The rainy season has ended and the winds have picked up again which means a lot of sweeping. The house is still moving along, but I'm having my doubts about being able to move in by the end of the month. It looks more like mid-May.

Su took Sam and Meredith back to Bali so that Sam could have the operation on his arm to take out the pins. Reports from Su are that the operation went well, and Sam says that he is looking forward to coming home and showing Mercedes, Rebecca and me all the metal that he had in his arm. Mercedes and Rebecca stayed here with me so that they could continue to go to school since they missed a month when Sam had his first operation in September.

Just after we made a deal for some land on the beach where we were going to build some bungalows, the owner cancelled the deal because he had a better offer from some Chinese guy who owns a fancy restaurant here. Needless to say, Su and I are disappointed and very irritated. I wasn't crazy about the location though and so maybe we will be able to negotiate for the land that I wanted in the first place which has a better beach and isn't between a hotel and a work camp. But, that will have to wait until Su returns from Bali.

I don't have any new photos to put up this week as not much new has been going on to photograph.

I put a little guestbook here so you can leave a message here for us if you are having trouble reaching us by email. Thanks for the messages in the guestbook. I like hearing from you all.